


Merry Little Sithmas

by PastelWonder



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Christmas Drabbles, Cozy family Christmas scenes - Freeform, Crack, F/M, First Love, Fluff, I can do Christmas in space if I want - Freeform, Kylo and Rey's grown children, Smut, The Last Great Sith verse - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-27 09:28:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17159489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PastelWonder/pseuds/PastelWonder
Summary: And in case you didn't hear: Oh by golly! Holly, have a jolly Sithmas this year!





	1. Ransom Captive Isreal

**Author's Note:**

  * For [voodoomarie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/voodoomarie/gifts).
  * Inspired by [A Violent Heart](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14266785) by [PastelWonder](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PastelWonder/pseuds/PastelWonder). 



> A short series of holiday drabbles for a dear, dear friend.
> 
> Happy Sithmas, Voo-baby.

“I dunno…” She raised the curtain with just the tips of her long painted fingernails. Through the near-white slant of exposed light, she saw the undulating mass of a crowd far, far below her dais. It was impossible to tell if the roiling, squirming feeling in her belly was her nerves or their baby.

 _Baby,_ she decided, when her daughter kicked her sharply in the bladder. She winced, chewing her lip at the throng. “S’a lot of people.”

“Yes,” behind her, where he was working the tungsten clasp of his cape, the Sith answered with his usual patient melancholy. “That’s why it’s called the imperial address.”

“But does it have to be the _whole_ Empire?” she turned, and gasped. “Oh my Light, you’re _hideous_.”

He was dressed all in black, a deep, patterned velvet surcoat that seemed to swallow all light, leather leggings and tall boots with tooth-like eyelets for its lacings. His cloak, a long, solid velvet somehow blacker than the rest of his raiment, hung down his left shoulder to pool on the floor behind him. With another sharp inhale of disapproval, she noticed the inside lining was a ghastly sunfire red. With his gaunt white face and gruesome teeth, he was the colors of his Imperial Insignia.

A horrible smile wrenched his deep mar as he straightened and angled his chin to give her his malformed profile. “Merry Christmas.”

“No,” she shook her head emphatically, making the tiny crystal snowflakes draped through her elegant hairstyle chime like bells. She was dressed as his exact counterpart, all soft, feminine lace in pure winter white fitted to her body, overlayed in a thousand crystal beads that glittered like living starlight when she walked. Her face was painted in sweet pastels, the highpoints of her cheeks and bare shoulders frosted in sheer, pale blue to gleam like snow-capped peaks on the horizon. She swept her long satin Watteau train behind her and minced her way across the tile to where he waited smirking. “You cannot go out like that, there are children-”

It was a mistake, she realized belatedly, to come within arm’s reach while they were still behind the curtain. He threaded his massive gloved hand through the small space created where her hand held her swollen belly and drew her flush against his front.

He dipped to steal a kiss from her lips.

“Sto-oop,” she whined, her hand on the bottom swell of his titanic ribcage in a vain attempt to preserve her delicate dress. “You’ll smirk it-”

He bent further, giving her a shark’s grin that would have made a lesser mortal faint in fear.  “Kiss me so I don’t have to.”

She huffed. “You know what? I think I do know what I want for your stupid Christmas.”

“What’s that?” he leaned closer, cool amusement twisting his scar.

Her eyes narrowed, earrings swinging gaily as she snapped, “For somebody to staple your big stupid Sith-mouth shut, thas what.”

His lashes fluttered in a black parody of the way hers did when his compliment took her by surprise. “Why Rey of Jakku, what a violent little Light you are.” He nuzzled her with the tip of his beak, “I love it.”

“Oh shush up,” she took his big, brutish face between her small hands and kissed him. His skin was like ice, his lips blackened from his power and so, so much larger than hers. Soft and full and luxurious, like the bed she slept in beside him, like the meals he fed her morning, noon and night.

Like the life he’d given her.

Their baby leapt and danced inside her. She held his thick, cold tongue in her mouth.

His eyes had that haunting, hurting look when their lips parted. Like she was twisting his guts with a thin-bladed knife. So pathetical for her.

_I love him._

“Please, Sith,” she stroked his cheek, putting a little pretty pleading in her tone. “ _Please_ wear your mask.”

“Say you love me,” his love-strangled breath came fast and freezing against her face, “and I’ll destroy all the stars in the sky.”

She forced her lips not to quirk into a smile. Power was such a beautiful thing.

Her thumb chased the shimmering pink gloss from his dark lips as she studied him from beneath her lashes. “Really? Every star.”

“All of it,” he enunciated with teeth. His lightless eyes had yet to blink for staring into hers.

“Well thank you. That’s very sweet.”

His grip on her tightened somewhat desperately, though his face stayed intensely, expectantly somber.

He was still waiting, she realized.

She stroked her fingers his mane, the softest part of his outsides. The strands slipped like black silk between her many rings of rare metals and precious stones.

She looked back into the face of her husband. Her lover. Her conqueror.

Her big, ugly, beautiful beast.

“I do love you,” she traced just the tips of his lashes with delicate, whispering touch as her arm wound around his neck. “I love you with all the suns in my heart.”

Her hand not holding him dropped down to cradle their baby through her belly. “We both do.”

His lip tremored. He blinked, and those deep, dark eyes shone wet in the low light of the anti-chamber. “Rey.”

Holding his strong shoulders for balance, she strained onto her toes and laid a soft kiss on his forehead. “S’my name. Don’t wear it out.”

He snorted.

Knocking. Someone was knocking, quiet and discreet.

“Come in, General,” she called, as her husband turned to quickly, innocuously wick the wet from his eyes with the side of his gloved finger. Her eyes rolled.

As if the whole universe hadn’t seen him sob at some point already.

“Supreme Leader,” the General bowed deeply to her. He looked sharp, almost handsomeable even in his ceremonial regalia. “Your Majesty is the embodiment of the season. High Commander,” he saluted to Ren, no longer a ruler since abdicating his power to his little Light, but still the General’s senior in rank.

And still a Sith Lord.

“You look-” Hux faltered, at a loss for words.

“Like a big ugly vulture,” Rey supplied with dismay, “I told ‘im, he’ll scare all the poor children to deaf.”

“Death,” her husband clarified with a smirk.

She crossed her arms, catching some of her pretty lace with the gems on her sleeves as she huffed, “Whatevah.”

Pointing across the room at her dressing bureau, she snapped her fingers. “Mask. Now.”

He bowed sweepingly, so low his cape fell over his shoulder and pooled in a whirl of red and black on the floor. “As you wish, Your Majesty.”

She couldn’t help but notice, as he stood and turned, that he really was so very broad.

“-brief but not flippant,” the General was giving her a last-minute primer as the apparatus hissed and clicked in the background. “Warm but not overly familiar.”

She bobbed along, clutching the sleeve of his regimental coat like a lifeline as she concentrated like her life depended on it.

“But General,” she pleaded, “shouldn’t he give the address?”

They looked together at the Sith, who stood now at his full ten feet, broader than two large men standing shoulder-to-shoulder, with the steel grate of his mask gleaming like a fang-jawed smile.

“No,” she gave a long, put-upon sigh, “S’pose he can’t, can he?”

“You will do superbly, Your Majesty,” the General assured her. He gave her hand on his arm a brief, perfunctory squeeze that was nearly comforting, before handing her to the Sith. “Just, if you will, for the love of God, keep to the script.”

“Script, yep, got it,” she nodded. Even in her heeled slippers, she hardly reached her husband’s ribcage.

“Better?” his sardonic sneer sieved porous and metallic through his speech modulator.

In her womb, his baby rolled and clapped.

“I-”

With great flourish, he drew back the curtain before she could finish and dragged her gently onto the balcony.

The roiling, cheering crowd saw him and stopped. The silence was like a great, malevolent hand pressing downwards from the sky.

Without seeing it, she _felt_ his Darkness sneer.

She stepped out in front of him, a dazzling ray of light amidst the grey and black of their Empire.

The people’s only hope.

“H-hullo,” she gave them all a tentative wave as she stepped up onto the dais before the microphone. Thousands of halocams clicked their flashes in brilliant blinks of light. A camera droid buzzed distractingly nearby.

The air on this planet, the largest in their Galaxy, was cold and sterile in the limelight. She wanted to rub her arms and cower behind him.

Instead, she nervously tapped the receiver. “Check-”

Feedback whined so loudly she flinched.

“Whoops, shitballs. Sorry, so sorry. I- I’m not really a-” she looked down at the crowd.

 _Brief but not flippant,_ the Genera’s advice played on a loop _. Warm but not overly familiar. Regal regal regal regal-_

“I ain’t really a queen,” she dipped down and smiled sweetly self-deprecating into the microphone. Her jewels tinkled merrily.

The crowd shifted uncertainly. Behind the curtain, she heard Hux groan, “Good Lord, not again…”

Her husband snorted.

“I ain’t a leader, neither. Like you, I didn’t pick this for myself. Life handed me this lot, like it’s handed most of you yours. S’way it goes, innit?”

Her thick Jakkuvian lilt washed warm and comforting through the speakers. Her audience relaxed into a murmuring nod of agreement. A few smiled.

One young woman near the dais waved her hand high and shouted, “We love you, Rey!”

She waved back, “I love you too, dovie. Thank you for comin’. Thank all of you for coming. It’s been a shit-fuck cycle, hasn’t it?”

More tentative nods, and a few quiet murmurs and fervent, fear-filled glances up at the Sith.

She pressed on. “A lot of you are wonderin’, about what’s next. How are we going to get by? How are we going to take care of ourselves, feed our fam’lies-”

Her voice snagged. She laid her hand on her belly.

Her baby stay perfectly still, listening.

Her breath shook, she tried desperately not to wring her hands. Over her shoulder, she looked back at the Sith to get some sense of his reaction.

Silently, he inclined his head.

She swallowed her terror, her self-doubt, the last scrap of her innocence, and plowed on. “I know you’re all scared. I know you’re all tired. I know it’s Christmas and we’re all supposed to sing an’ smile and be happy. But our hearts hurt. We don’t know what comes next.”

She looked at the red diamond ring on her finger, at the banners hung stark and foreboding around the great arena, bearing the insignia of her husband’s great empire.

A camera-drone drew nearer, zeroing in on her face. She licked her lips.

“Well I’ll tell you what’s next. Stability. Safety. Prosperity. _Goodness_. This Order, who’s been takin’ the mickey outta you all cycle, for _generations_ , they all work for me now,” she pointed to her heart, “this junk-slave, from Jakku. And she, I, work for you.”

Her hand spanned out above them.

The people wondered at her in awe.

Behind her, her husband’s pride swell beyond him, blazing and tidal, to eclipse her on the dais.

Somewhere, beyond her perception, she knew the old Siths were howling, slavering and gnashing their razor teeth.

The thought made her grin. “So, I want all of you to go home and ‘ave a truly happy Christmas. Eat loads of sweets, sing songs to each other, kiss your children,” beneath the podium, she held her baby through her belly, “’cause next cycle, we’re coming out at lightspeed. We’re bringin’ a new Order to the Galaxy. You. And me.”

Her hand lifted. She blew a soft kiss to her people, and waved. “Happy Christmas, dahlings. From your Supreme Leader.”

She turned and gestured. “And the Sith.”

In front of his Empire, his legions of troopers, the Darkness and the Force, he knelt and bowed at her feet.

The planet erupted in violent cheers.

Their cries took to the skies like a flock of doves, thousands of languages and accents rising to touch her Light.

“What are they sayin’?” she asked him, as he unfolded into a towering, tender menace above her.

Her sweet Sith.

“Howai-too Maza,” his gentle mirth sieved through his mask as his monstrous hands spanned cherishingly around her waist. “It means, White Mother.”

“Oh, well that’s- that’s rather- Kylo!”

He lifted her, high, high into the air.

Their people’s joyous raucous quadrupled. They pounded their breasts and shouted her name. _Howaitomaza_.

Her baby kicked and spun with delight.

She grinned, “It is a happy Christmas, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” agreed the Sith.


	2. Fall On Your Knees

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Discord/Armitage. A dark, dystopian Christmas from yours-truly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set before her campaign.

The Admiral loathed Christmas-time.

He had poor memories of his mother’s anxious preening and lavish feasts juxtaposed to his father’s dry dinner-time lectures on the moral pitfalls of idol worship and sybarism. Then came the exchange of presents, an orderly, joyless affair in which he and his four younger sisters each received the same amalgam of winter apparel, toiletries, and school supplies, along with a stocking full of oranges and brandied nuts and whatever they’d managed to cobble for each other. To round out the evening, Father would read one for Fordyce’s sermons by firelight, droning endlessly in his crisp, rolling monotone while Mamon hid her kitten yawns behind her hand and the siblings all pinched each other to stay awake.

It was the most pitiable day of the year, next to Easter Sunday, which won purely on the merit of his father shouting himself hoarse over the _“flagrant hedonism on this the day of our risen Lord!”_

But this – this _had_ to be one of those infernal Christmas miracles his youngest sister Abbey had yabbered sweetly for during nightly prayers, kneeling with her doll tucked between her elbows at the foot of his bed where she insisted she sleep to keep the monsters at bay. It simply _must_ be, because his charge, the savage, sensually beautiful Discord Ren, was asking him – Armitage Bastille Hux the fourth – for a mother-loving favor.

On Christmas Eve.

“Um, _hel-lo-oh,_ Base One to Hux, come in Hux?” she wriggled her perfect little fingers in front of his face. “Are you listening to me?”

“Yes. You would like a ride,” he repeated calmly, his cool blue eyes betraying nothing of the intense, roiling thunder of his heart behind his breast.

She shook back her long, glossy hair and cracked her chewing gum. “Yeah. You said your street bike seats two, right? And that if I wanted to get off-base, you’d take me? So,” she cocked her head. More of her hair slipped over her shoulder and trailed down her breast. “Will you?”

_Yes._

He slipped his hands into his pockets to stop himself from reaching for her. “Where would my lady like to go?”

“There’s a party in sector-nine tonight? I heard a basilisk’s hosting.”

He frowned. Basilisk’s were malevolent creatures, capable of the very darkest of practices. “That should be a quaint affair, then.”

“It’s gonna be _sick_ ,” she grinned. At the prospect of violent revel, her dark eyes lit up. “Everyone’s going be there. There’s a live death metal band, and tons of chicks. You could totally get laid.”

He gave a mirthless snort, “Well in that case-”

“They’re going to have fire-breathers,” she leaned in and lowered her voice. Her smile glinted sharp in the base’s blue light, “Real ones.”

“Dragons, here?” His chin took on a dubious tilt, “How can that possibly be legal?”

“Who cares? Come _on_ , Hux…”

Before he could parry, she closed the small space between them and stood on tiptoe to wrap her arms around his neck. Through her thick quilted surcoat and the double-breast of his regimental jacket, he felt the press of her soft, sweet breasts against his chest.

His blood rushed and roared, but he kept his expression neutral and his hands in his pockets as he studied those large, lightless eyes wreathed in thick black lashes.

God help him, she was beautiful.

“Pleeease, Huxy?” she pleaded, “I wanna get wasted, and there’s tons of weirdos at the parties. You know my papa will _kill_ me if I rip another arms dealer’s throat out. He’s still super-pissed about the last one you rapiered-”

“He made a sexual innuendo at your ladyship and _rapier_ is not a verb, it is a noun.”

Her nose crinkled, exactly the way her mother’s did at the Sith when she wanted to charm him. “You’re really hot when you’re all haughty.”

His nostrils flared and his cock jerked, unbidden. He snatched her wrist where she’d started to trace his lips. He could taste her cool, sugar-sweet breath on his tongue.

“Do not,” he warned her, soft and dangerous, “trifle with me, girl.”

She snapped her gum in his face and bounced her eyebrows. “So is that a yes?”

His mouth pressed into a grim, humorless line.

He waited.

“Ugh, _fine_.” Her head fell back. “I’m sorry I touched your face, okay?” She gave him her softest, prettiest eyes. A wolfling begging for table scraps. “Can you please just take me? I need to get outta here for a while. The Darkness-” she shook her head. “I feel so- I’m scared what’ll happen if I don’t get it out.”

“Very well,” he acquiesced, letting her wrist slip through his grasp.

“Wait, seriously?” a black grin began to bloom across her face.

He inclined his head. “If it pleases my lady.”

“Oh my Dark, like, _so pleased_ ,” her tone became pitched and vapid in parody of her younger sister’s. Too quickly for him to brace for, she hopped up using his shoulders for leverage and pecked him loudly on the lips.

A childish gesture, intended to annoy him.

His heart stuttered within his breast.

She truly would be the death of him.

“Meet me by our tree at ten,” she had already started down the hall towards her chambers. Her mane moved sleek and glossy with the sway of her ass. She tossed back, “Bring smokes, kay?”

 

 

 

“Wait, gross – is that what you’re wearing?”

He was waiting for her outside North Tower under the crystalline needles of a mammoth pine. The night beyond the wintery canopy was clear as diamond-glass and cruelly cold. At its zenith already, the moon shown three-quarters full, casting cool blue light over her approaching beauty.

He snorted good-naturedly, a lit cigarette already tucked between his lips. He ashed the tip before passing it to her. “It is, indeed.”

She took a long drag as she cocked her head and considered his dark, conservative street clothes. “You look super-old.”

“You look-” his eyes trailed over her dress. Well, he supposed _dress_ was too gracious. _Long, skin-tight shirt_ was more accurate, paired with netted stockings and tall, sleek boots she’d undoubtedly borrowed from her older sister. Her lips were painted sanguine red, making her other-worldly pallor even more arresting in the moonlight.

“Stunning,” he finished, realizing too late he’d betrayed himself.

_Bloody Christmas._

“Really?” She looked down, ankles turning out so she could better examine the creamy inside of her thighs through her loose-woven fishnets.

Before he could stop himself, he pictured pinning her to the snow-stippled ground and ripping the cheap netting with his teeth, exposing her pretty pink pussy to the night-

Something cold swept over his mind. He slammed a mental shield between it and the image of him ravishing her like an animal.

“Armitage,” she’d drifted closer, her eyes large and beautifully feral in the dark.

They swept over him with intent.

_Shit fuck bollocks-_

He caught his panic by the collar and throttled it.

_Fear only makes them frenzy. Remain calm._

He inclined is head, “Shall we be off then, my lady?”

“Off where?” her voice was sweet and whisper-soft. Like her hands on his chest, over his thrashing heart.

He looked everywhere but her red, red mouth, as her presence bore down like lead weight on his mind. “To your party, ma’am.”

“Ma’am,” she snorted. Her touch hadn’t stopped at his chest, she was smoothing upwards, over his shoulder and around his collar. Her fingertips played cold and sensual against his neck. “I wanna party right here. With you.”

He could tell by the way her lashes flickered as she spoke, how she tilted her face up at the shivering stars, how her strong, lush body swayed to a primal, preternatural rhythm only she could perceive, that her Darkness was speaking to her.

Well, hadn’t this little evening gone sideways on him?

“No good deed,” he muttered, as her arms wound around his neck.

“Hm?” her fingers raked lavishly through his precise hairstyle, drawing tingling lines along his scalp as she scissored her thighs.

He kept his tone droll and soft. “I said, I rather think your father would not approve.”

“Fuck him,” she hissed, lashes fluttering prettily as she trailed his features with her eyes. “I can take whatever I want.”

“Yes, I know,” he murmured, his calm gaze darting down to where her hands had gripped his collar. She was going to rip his shirt, he realized wryly.

It was futile to try restraining her at this point, where she’d perceive any violent contact as a challenge. She was too strong anyway, he’d witness firsthand her wrench the lung out of a man through his mouth. The man had lived for another full minute after. He couldn’t remember the offender’s transgression. Neither could she, he was sure.

Strange, that the memory should stoke his arousal for her, rather than dowse it. No sane man in his correct mind would desire a Sith, especially not one as rabid and vengeful as his lady. And yet…

“Sweet angel,” slowly, cherishingly, he took her face between his hands and drew her against him, effectively pinning her hands. She did not notice, her breath hitching as she searched his eyes through the dark. “I would give you any of your desires. You have only to name them, and they are yours.”

Her eyes hooded. She turned and nuzzled his palm. “Armitage…”

Under the weight of his desire, his restraint strained and groaned.

“You are so beautiful,” he murmured, calculating and yet breathlessly sincere, “So powerful. My soul trembles at your glory-”

“Mmm,” she stretched her arms high above her, eyes closed as she arched and preened at his praise. “Yes…”

His hands ghosted down to her hips as he took a moment, merely a nanosecond, to savor the sight of her small breasts rising sweetly to her neckline, before he made his tone ponderous instead of awed.

“Though I wonder…”

She was raking her fingers through her hair, dragging it upwards and letting it fall like dark feathers over her shoulders and breast. “Hmm?”

“A passing thought, really. But perhaps…”

One eye cracked open, peering lightless beneath her lashes. “What?”

“Well, regarding the fire-breathers. Your father can command them, surely. He owns the Darkness.”

She focused a little more on his face as her head angled sharply. “Yeah? What’s your point?”

“Never mind, my love. Forget I mentioned it,” his fingers sifted through her cool, dark hair. He’d allow himself that, just this once. “If my lady wants to make love by the moonlight-”

He hadn’t braced himself fully, so he stumbled back half-a-step when she shoved at him. Hard.

“What?” she spat, righteous fury transforming her hazy ecstasy into something dangerous. And equally beautiful. “You think I can’t control some fucking fire-breather, because I’m not strong enough? Not _worthy_?”

He twitched away a smirk as cloyingly he soothed, “Not at all, not at all. I’m positive, in a few year’s time, given more training-”

“Fuck you,” she snapped, baring her little teeth as she stalked through the snow. “Show you, fucking _few year’s time_. Stupid happabore’s ass-”

“Well,” she mounted his bike, tossing her mane back as she sassed “You wanna see a Sith tame a fire-breather? Get on.”

He waited for her to slide back, and when she didn’t, he swung smoothly onto the seat behind her. Her ass wedged cold and lush between his thighs. She gripped the bar inside the handles as he reached around her, caging her in his long, muscular arms to taking the steering. It wrung his heart slightly, to realize how easy and practiced the motion was. It was nothing for him to see over her, she fit perfectly within the curvature made by his larger body. As if she was his.

 _Thou shalt not covet,_ he heard his father chide.

Her breath hitched as he violently revved the engine.

He punched it.

 

 

 

Amongst all his terrible exercises of judgement, bringing her here simply had to be the worst.

For starters, she was completely nude.

“My lady,” his call was somewhere between a bark and a plea. He could hardly hear himself over the black grind of heavy metal covers of Christmas classics. “ _Please._ Do come down.”

With one hand, she wound slowly around and around a pole set on a miniscule platform high above the warehouse that had been commandeered for this hedonistic _soiree_. Undoubtedly, the apparatus was designed for the hired talent watching exasperated from the extensive pop-up bar beyond the makeshift dancefloor.

What had begun as a simple sybaritic rave had quickly devolved into mayhem when her ladyship arrived. The presence of so much malevolent energy had whipped her into frenzy; already, she’d kissed a go-go dancer on the lips and snapped the neck of two of the most powerful patrons at the party.

Much to the malignant delight of the rest.

“Merry sodding Christmas,” he growled, watching with unmitigated horror as the strobing strung lights drenched her bare skin in a barrage of psychedelic colors.

“Hux!” she called down to him.

His heart stopped fully at the sight of her young, firm breasts bobbing sweetly with her acrobatics.

“Discord,” he bit out warningly, finger lancing at her through the air, “do _not-”_

She gripped the pole in both hands and engaged her strong core, lifting her splayed legs into the air until she hung completely upside-down.

His temple throbbed. He could not _breathe_.

She flung out one hand, keeping herself aloft with the other as she beamed.

Below her, the crowd of bandits, mongers and thieves whistled and cheered. Someone sliced a champagne bottle with their saber, rising it so high its arc bathed her naked breasts in rich, cream-colored foam.

She opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue.

Oh yes, when the Sith found out about this, he was going to gut him alive.

Wrenching a keg from the hands of one tottering, blithering idiot, he used it to boost himself as he reached again, shouting over the din, “My lady-”

Their eyes met through the blinding flash of revolving lights.

Beneath the black mania that consumed her, she looked desperately afraid.

_Damn this fucking Darkness-_

“ _Armitage?”_ he saw, rather than heard, her say his name. The hoarse, grating whine of the metal music dulled and time slowed down as she strained to touch his fingertips.

“I’m here, angel,” he reached through his heart.

Suddenly, his horizon wrenched violently.

He landed on his back on the filthy concrete with the breath knocked out of him.

“Hey yo,” it was the host of this little jamboree, a large, malignant-looking basilisk with markings that shone silver in the shifting synthetic lights.

 _Venomous,_ he recognized as he picked himself gracefully up off the floor. _Splendid._

Its tongue flickered between its fangs. Scaled in dark plates that were nearly impenetrable, it was larger than the Sith.

“Tell your girl to get down,” it hissed. “Or I’m puttin’ her ass to work for real. And bouncin’ yours.”

Rage, blinding and primal, ignited in his gut. He reached behind his jacket for his concealed rapier, just as something dropped fast and dark to his side.

“Hey!” It was his lady, naked and dripping in fast-fizzling champagne. She looked absolutely berserk. “Get away from him!”

She shoved the basilisk hard enough to send it skidding back ten feet. “Don’t fucking touch him. He’s _mine_!”

It dropped to all fours and gnashed its jaws.

Her Darkshear lashed as she roared back.

The entire club encircled and chanted.

His heart thundered. He unsheathed his sword, hearing the tell-tale crackle of its laser edge as he spread out into an offensive stance. His eyes darted around the possible escape routes. “Lady Discord. Get behind me.”

How this evening had unraveled so rapidly, how he had let it devolve to this point-

“Oh my Dark Hux, are you okay?” Before he could comprehend what was happening, she stepped between his arms and pressed her bare body against his. Her lips met his in the most tender of kisses.

His arm wrapped around her, sheltering her beauty from the prying eyes of the crowd. “My lady.”

“I can’t believe that guy shoved you, what a little cocksucker,” she cupped his cheek, worry in her dark, pretty eyes. “Did he hurt you?”

“Hardly,” he assured her mildly, “I was merely caught off-guard.”

Ahead of them, the basilisk reared and hissed.

She flicked her two fingers, and brilliant lash of Darkshear struck it so forcefully that it seemed to glow from within. It let out a blood-curdling screech as its body withered and convulsed.

For a single heartbeat, the club was completely silent. Then a dancer screamed, pitched and long, and the crowded erupted into chaos.

Neither of them noticed.

“Oh Hux, I’m sorry,” she whispered, tracing his lips with her fingertip. This time, he let her. “I feel like I ruined Christmas.”

His fingers slipped through her soft, champagne-soaked hair. “Not at all.”

“My Darkness-” she whimpered. Her face burrowed against his chest.

With a shuddering groan followed by an incredible shattering clash, the bar at the end of the warehouse was overturned.

“It wants something,” she whispered. She rubbed against him, back-and-forth. Back-and-forth.

His throat went dry, as a thousand dark scenarios played through his mind.

Lovingly, he tipped up her chin.

“I know what you need.”

Vaguely, he saw a searing flash of red-yellow light balloon upwards over her shoulder. A man had been set alight. He thrashed and danced screaming.

She gave him a tremulous smile.

“Let’s go,” he crooned.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Beneath the pale wash of blue, prelit twilight, he sat on the soft, silty shore beneath the deadly-looking crags of Troopers Bay and watched his lady splash about in the freezing ocean.

Her body slipped sleek as an eel’s through the black, choppy waves. Behind her, the first creeping light drew a rosy line along the horizon. His cheeks burned, the cold stung sharply in his nose. He kept his hands tucked under his arms between draws as he savored the warmth of a cigarette. Its orange tip was a single pinprick against the backdrop of bruised shadows that was dawn on Christmas day.

A more perfect morning, he could not remember.

“Hux!” she chirped, as she did every so often. The winter wind carried her voice away with his smoke.

He lifted his hand and waved, a slow, pendulous motion.

She flapped back.

High above him, in a tree on the crags overlooking the beach, an owl hooted. Its mate, swooping further down the shore, crooed back.

Beyond, the ocean roiled, its inky surface reflecting the starlight back to the sky like shifting shards of mirror-glass.

 _Could sharks love?_ he wondered.

He thought of the Sith, the day he asked the Admiral to serve as commander and counsel to his daughter. A girl who’d sooner rip out her own teeth than spend five minutes alone with him.

 _“But sir, she loathes me,”_ he reminded the Sith mildly.

 _“Don’t be absurd, Admiral, she adores you,”_ a private sneer wrenched the beast’s scar, _“You’re her favorite pet.”_

_“Flattered, I’m sure.”_

That was almost two years ago. Two years of toil and squabbles, of chasing after her endlessly, of binding her wounds and mucking up her mess. She was irreverent, uncouth, woefully oppositional. Wildly possessive. Cruel-lipped and foul-tongued.

 _“She is her mother,”_ the Sith remarked once. His Captain, the notorious Phasma, had nodded her ascent.

She came bounding to him now, salted water streaming down the peaks and valleys of her naked body, her dark nipples crinkled to the night. Sand she’d kicked in her skip-shuffle from the shoreline made a sheer veil over her legs up to her thighs, her hair was slick and tendriled by the wet.

He moved her boots, the only article of her clothing they’d found, so she could drop onto his jacket beside him.

“Feeling refreshed?” he cocked his eyebrow as he fished a new cigarette from his pack. He lit it for her before he passed it.

She gave a short, involuntary huff of satisfaction as she flopped onto her back. The way women basked in the summer sun, she strained long and luxuriated in the light of the waning moon. “So happy.”

He flicked away his dying butt and stretched out beside her, fingers laced behind his head.

The stars trembled against the welling light.

“Hux-” there was a long pause as she took a drag from her cigarette. The smoke drifted away down the shore. “Why do you stay with me?”

His breath snagged in his throat.

She rolled onto her side and propped her cheek in her hand. Its other, with cigarette tucked delicately between her fingers, rested on her hip.

He kept his gaze fixed on the stars.

“You’re so talented, you could go anywhere, do _anything._ But you’re stuck here, babysitting me. Why? That’s so unfair to you.”

Within his chest, his heart gripped and would not let go.

“Do you want me to leave?”

Her hand came, soft and without its cigarette, to lay on his chest. She rested her cheek over his heart. “Never.”

Her voice was achingly small against the distant crush and churn of the waves. “But I don’t want you to hate me, either.”

“I could never hate you, my love,” his hand threaded through her hair. Beneath her, his shirt was drenched. The cold cut ribbons through his muscle and bone.

He did not care.

“My papa won’t let us be together,” she whispered. Her fingers curled and held as she burrowed deeper against his side. She was growing softer, heavier with sleep.

His fingers drew gentle, soothing patterns along the cool, bare skin of her back.

“Yes,” he murmured, “I am well-aware.”

“But maybe, if I become more powerful…” her voice was fading, like the night. She stifled a yawn in his shirt. “If I… if I become… more power…”

He reached over her and spread his jacket across them both. With his rapier beside him, he allowed his eyes to drift shut. “Sleep, little girl.”

She slept.

 

 

 

They woke at mid-day to the shrill cry of gulls circling over the shore.

She rode behind him on his street bike, wearing just her boots and his long dress shirt and jacket. She kept her cheek pressed in the cradle made by his shoulder blades, listening to the strong, constant thrum of his heart.

His bare, corded arms prickled in the cool air as he wound them over backroads through the forest. Sunlight sieved through the weeping branches of the tall, mature pines, dappling the road and burnishing his hair a brilliant, burning gold as they passed beneath its shafts. The rushing wind was soaked in the scents of snow and sap and salt from her skin.

He had never felt freer. More alive.

So it felt like a physical death when finally, he parked beneath the massive pine outside North Tower and tapped open the kickstand with the toe of his boot.

She held him with her arms around his waist, hand holding her wrist and cheek still tucked, until he called to her softly.

“My lady.”

She slipped quietly off the back of his bike and stood beside him.

In the mid-morning light, she was a vision. A dark angel that night forgot.

He took her hand, small and cool in his, and kissed it.

“I think it best if you go in first. For appearances,” he added needlessly. “I will make another round,” he gestured back at the roads behind him.

She fidgeted with the cuffs of his shirt over her fingers, so that only her little thumbs peeked out between the buttons. Her lip trembled. When her large, lightless eyes met his cool blue ones, they were wet.

His expression softened. “Angel, I-”

She stepped in and kissed him.

It was fervent, artless, rushed. Wanton. One of his hands gripped the soft flesh of her thigh as the other fisted her hair. She moaned and collared his neck, opening wide to him.

He tasted her cold tongue.

 _Glory,_ sang the shining sun.

As suddenly as she began, she was done with him, wrenching back so fast his hand in her hair trailed after her.

_Following, always following._

They were both panting as she raked her mane and turned back to base without a word.

He watched her until she disappeared over the fence. His heart still thundered as he clicked the ignition and revved his bike.

 _Happy Christmas, indeed,_ he grinned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This may be my favorite couple of all time. 
> 
> Hope you're having a ball : >

**Author's Note:**

> Your comments and kudos are *always* appreciated.


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